What They Don’t Tell You About “Swatting”

When it comes to the new prank breakout called “swatting”, I’m extremely late to the conversation.  For those that don’t know already, swatting is when people, most usually gamers, contact police departments with false claims and get them to show up at innocent people’s residences. Because of the false report very intimidating SWAT teams show up full force with guns drawn and arrest people. This unfortunately happened to many people including a long and growing list of celebrities. The victims were most recently gamers who were in the middle of live streaming thus catching much of the drama on camera. This is a demented American paradigm on all sides of the spectrum for many reasons. However, conversation about swatting has been carefully controlled by corporate media and the true problems with swatting has deliberately remained unspoken about.

Of course swatting is a huge problem and not something anyone in their right state of mind should consider for a prank. These days police shoot to kill on limited information and it’s very dangerous. The people doing this for humor, kicks, or for not liking someone are going way beyond the line of what is acceptable for a normal, functional human being who doesn’t have sociopathic tendencies. If caught, these people should get a significant amount of jail time for the principle until people learn that this is an exhaust of resources, it’s extremely dangerous and this isn’t a joke. Regardless, even though the swatters are clearly in the wrong, various news media outlets had a very interesting way of covering this phenomenon, and never once brought attention to the SWAT team police protocol itself. How can something like swatting even become pervasive in the first place?

The Need For SWAT Teams

Swatting is obviously unhinged, but so is the new prevalence of SWAT teams period. SWAT teams incessantly dispatched for situations that do not call for SWAT teams are a perfect example of the militarization of the police in the grip of our American military industrial complex. Police departments are being armored with a plethora of military equipment the departments clearly do not need and are terrorizing American citizens with extreme over-the-top tactics that are not called for. It’s an embarrassing scene to see all the videos of overly militarized police with AK47s crashing into civilian homes shouting orders to little boys, girls or grandparents in American suburbia. For lack of a better term, it all looks so idiotic. Because of corporatization, our military industrial complex, and our nation’s insistent commitment to an astronomical defense budget, the American way of life as we knew it will remain in a downward spiral for a long time to come.

The fake war on terror that America funds, and a sustained commitment to a fake drug war has created where we are now. All a bored teenage moron has to do is pick up the phone and claim his neighbor has a bomb or is brandishing a weapon and a band of militarized police with armored trucks, machine guns, bullet proof vests and flash grenades will come yelling and screaming with weapons drawn while bashing the door in. No detective work or questions asked.  Just a mindless head-first bum rush. To apprehend countless false leads, drug dealers, or one alleged gunman or “terrorist”, fully armored police bust loose and shut down towns. It’s insanity. Despite how much all this costs us, the powers that be will never readily disclose the amount of times this type of police presence and weaponry was actually necessary because it’s embarrassingly close to 0%.

SWAT teams are supposed to be for extreme situations such as bomb threats or gunmen. However, according to statistics on http://freedomoutpost.com a whopping 62% of SWAT team raids were dispatched to look for drugs in private civilian homes. 36% of those raids produced absolutely nothing. Not cool at all.

During one SWAT team raid, police officers who may have thought they were on the set of a movie crashed through a door of a regular American family and threw a flash grenade that landed inside a baby’s crib. Needless to say the baby was hospitalized in critical condition. After all the intense police tomfoolery, it turned out the person they were after didn’t even reside there and like countless other cases, there were no drugs found.

The Switch

The television is a very dangerous device. It is a propaganda machine. If you are unaware of its many functions and how it is used, you are probably being brainwashed on a daily basis. They tell you what to think about a variety of issues. The powers that be put such a spin on the swatting situation so we all can be riled up and angry at these idiot “swatters”. How dare these people do this, right? You’ve been baited with a peon of a culprit to focus on. The entire time they want to divert you from realizing the real situation; Police shouldn’t be entering any homes in such a manner in this country for any reason without proper protocol. That is the real issue being grossly downplayed. Sure the police can come to investigate, but they should be knocking at the door like a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, vacuum cleaner salesman, or anyone else. Invading homes, breaking down doors with battering rams while tossing flash grenades is something new they are just trying to get us use to as “normal”, but it’s unconstitutional and should never happen. And the fact that there are so many hoaxes and pranks antagonizing citizens cements the fact that the Constitutional rights meant to protect us were there for a reason.

No uncorroborated anonymous phone call should be enough to send police barricading through anyone’s home. They know that though–most people don’t. And if during these unwarranted raids police officers end up injuring or killing civilians, blowing up babies, or shooting family pets, the taxpayers foot the bill on lawsuits so nothing really changes.  Regardless, anytime the powers that be try to spin a story and tell you who to be angry at, keep your head clear, your eyes open and SWAT it right back.